I Quit Reddit For 8 Months: Here’s What I Learned

Reddit used to be a vice of mine, a place where I would go to waste time debating and chatting with others about nonsensical topics. It has been a long habit of mine to try and converse with others over the internet ever since the early days of online forums.

I am sure there have been times where I thought I gained value out of reading threads and comments but now I have some perspective and I would like to share with you some of lessons I’ve learned along the way through abstinence. It’s strange how we can learn as much, if not more, from being away from something than if when we are in it.

Lesson One

I have come to realize and accept that I gained almost no value from hundreds of hours of reading on reddit. I even pruned my subreddits (subscribing to a niche topic of interest) to only the most relevant and educational, and I still failed to gain anything. Why? Because as soon as I would “learn” something I would mentally move on and “unlearn” what I just learned (I put unlearn in quotes because I never learned the thing in the first place since I didn’t study or go back over it).

So whatever information, insight, or advantage I thought I was gaining was nothing more than a dopamine hit to the brain. I googled this and discovered a study was done at UC Berkeley that found that information acts on the brain’s dopamine reward system in the same way as money or food. No wonder we are all addicted to social media sites.

It was good for me to get the break from daily (and sometimes hourly) reading of reddit subs, whether they were high or low brow, because they shoved aside any other efforts at focused learning I would have otherwise been occupied with. If you think you are learning from reading reddit, you are most likely wrong.

Lesson Two

People argue in circles. Threads rotate in circles. Subs circulate the same trash over and over. Memes become noise. Things lose their taste and luster. Comments never improve.

Based on a recent peek, the same threads I left 8 months ago are still going over the same old stuff. When I read comments many of them are by the same people. There is also the pain of not knowing the age and experience of who is commenting and I find a lot of the comments to be immature and inexperienced. A lot of commenters have too much time on their hands, and I remember when I was younger, the more time I had the more I was involved in online threads. Some people have too much time on their hands and they’ll link to a bunch of articles or websites that back up their brazen assumptions.

In order for me to grow my thinking and introspection, I had to jump ship from the torrent of subs circling the black hole of beaten dead horses.

Lesson Three

Reddit is abusive. Not only are people constantly abusing others by trolling them or gaslighting them (or plain lying) but we abuse ourselves by consuming too many things that create noise and anger in our subconscious. I used to read controversial threads to see if any of the comments said things I agreed with, so I could see whether or not other people thought like I did.

Well, to my amazement people hardly ever thought like I did and this created anger in me. The Id in psychoanalytic theory is the primitive and instinctive component of our personality, and when it doesn’t get its way, it gets angry (like a toddler when reality doesn’t happen like it expects). So every time I read something I didn’t like, and then saw others agreeing with it and accepting it my Id would go crazy. This is why I think a lot of internet communities end up branching off into their own echo chambers, simply because, over time, people cannot handle the anger of running across disagreeing information.

Commenters who frequently project their Id onto others are instigating abusive relationships. This is partially why, if one is to be persuasive, one should be as gentle and accommodating as possible, to soothe the egos of those who one aims to persuade. But we get overambitious and see our line of thinking as so powerfully obvious as truth, we don’t need to coat the bitter pill in sugar. The Id reigns in much online discussion and I believe its why so many communities are seen as toxic. On the one hand, I believe people should be able to express themselves, but on the other hand, the anonymity of the internet unleashes the Id.

Conclusion

I will now be going back to blocking reddit from my smartphone and disengaging from any threads since I don’t find any value in them and I don’t wish to become readdicted to the dopamine hits. Does this mean I think I’m superior to all of reddit and no one will ever find anything of value there? Not at all, I know I cannot moderate my reddit habits for long before they start to take over all of my free time. If you can and do moderate yourself when engaging with reddit, then go ahead and continue to do so, but I have learned my lessons and I will stick with my conclusion. I encourage you to experiment with your own abstinence from a social media platform that is taking over your free time (and maybe even edging into your work/study time).

Post-Script

It’s been years since I wrote this and it’s still largely true. I ended up getting re-addicted to reddit before I had to learn the same lessons. But this time I learned a new lesson: reddit was overstimulating me. For me, spending time on reddit was like spending time in a classroom full of random people ripping on each other and wildly debating nonsense and saying funny things, sometimes unironically.

I had to quit reddit for the same reason I had to quit Twitter/X: nothing else was as stimulating, everything else felt boring. Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, they all made me ADHD. I couldn’t focus on anything that required a little bit of work and effort on my part. I couldn’t even watch a Youtube video without 2x speed while playing Solitaire on my second screen.

When I realized what reddit was doing to me and I stopped I felt like I got my old brain back. I can now focus. I no longer feel time-urgency, or that feeling you get when you want to be doing something else so you need your current thing to hurry up and be over. It’s as if the ADHD has lifted. All because I was being overstimulated, or probably what people call the hedonic treadmill or dopamine hits. You have to completely cut out all forms of addictive social media in order to know what I mean.

Reddit was the final social media I felt addicted to. After I recovered from the withdrawal, which took a few days, I started to find math and science interesting and began reading textbooks. The videos I would watch on Youtube were engineering and science related and I watched them at 1x speed without any Solitaire pulled up. I could focus long enough to work on side-hustles and make extra money. Instead of finding ways to distract myself, I began to find ways to put myself to work. I felt normal again.

So, please, if anything, get off of social media so your brain stops getting hijacked and you can live your life again without everything feeling so burdensome and boring.